WRITING EXTRAVAGANZA PART TWO
Thanks, Zoom.
As promised, here is PART TWO. The International Women’s Writing Guild has a packed January 2026. I have been honored to work with these incredible writing women, and I would not miss a single workshop. Even if you have heard it from me already, let me say it again: I would not be a writer without these talented people. It is IWWG’s 50th year, so all workshops are only $50.00 each. See you online!
THE LINEUP:
Writing in a Broken World
YOU HAVE THREE CHOICES
SATURDAY, JANUARY 10, 10:00-11:00 AM EST REGISTER
OR… SATURDAY, JANUARY 17, 10:00-11:00 AM EST REGISTER
OR…SATURDAY, JANUARY 24, 10:00-11:00 AM EST REGISTER
Our world is broken. We need to reach out to repair the part of the world close to us. The workshop will have three parts:
Speak and bear witness (Rainer Maria Rilke, Etty Hillesum, Martin Luther King, Clarissa Pinkola Estes)
Journal to uncover our voice (CG Jung, Thomas Merton, Marion Woodman)
Write and bear witness (Terry Tempest Williams, Naomi Shihab Nye)
Susan Tiberghien, author of five memoirs and two writing books: One Year to a Writing Life and Writing Toward Wholeness, teaches at CGJung Societies, IWWG, Geneva Writers Group, and at writers’ centers and conferences in America and Europe. Active in International PEN, she lives in Geneva, Switzerland. REGISTER ABOVE.
Mindful Editing for Reluctant Revisers
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, 12:00 - 1:00 PM EST
You will learn how to edit your own writing with greater awareness and focus. You will learn some basic English concepts, guidelines, and skills you can apply for clear, correct, and meaningful writing. By learning to pay attention to the basics, you will be able to get a few more things right before you seek (and pay for!) professional editorial assistance. This class offers an editorial mindset and practical tools to help you see your own writing in a new way.
Andi Penner, an accomplished writer and formerly an English professor and technical editor, is now retired and living the writing life in New Mexico where she is completing a memoir for publication. She has published three books of poetry and writes In Our Own Ink, a Substack newsletter. REGISTER HERE: https://www.iwwg.org/event-6461703
Writing Personal Stories that Matter
THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 10:15 AM -12:00 PM EST
Annie Dillard once said, “You have to take pains not to hang on the reader’s arms, like a drunk, and say ‘And then I did this and it was so interesting.’ ” What is it, exactly, that makes personal narrative truly engaging? Working together we will be looking at how to find the kernel, the image or concept at the heart of your story. From this kernel, we will explore and apply several techniques useful for writing your openings, middles, and closings. Short submissions of no more than one page are invited but not required. This workshop provides a roadmap for both you and your readers, guideposts to keep them reading and you writing.
Former board chair of the International Women’s Writing Guild, Judith Huge has taught for many Guild summer conferences . For the past ten years, she has conducted writing workshops for the OLLI Program at the University of South Florida. Published internationally in Traveler’s Tales, she is co-author of 101 Ways You Can Help, a guide for providing thoughtful support to those who are grieving. REGISTER HERE: https://www.iwwg.org/event-6472967
Containing Time: I’m Still Here
FRIDAY, JANUARY 23, 4:00 - 5:30 PM EST
Containing Time: I’m Still Here. In advance, please read Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Spring and Fall.” We will write poems exploring, for each us, time’s transience.
Myra Shapiro returned to New York City after forty-five years in Georgia and Tennessee where she worked as a teacher and librarian and, with her husband, raised two daughters.She is the author of four books of poems, most recently Crossing the Street to Paradis, and a memoir. Her poems have appeared in many periodicals and anthologies, including the Best American Poetry. She serves on the Board of Poet’s House. REGISTER HERE: https://www.iwwg.org/event-6493316
Writing Divine Presence
MONDAY, JANUARY 26, 12:00 - 1:30 PM EST
How, in a darkening world, can we locate, recognize, remember, and experience divine presence? Helping us answer that perennial question is one of the ancient powers and functions of writing. Sacred stories, prayers, myths, visions, invocations, prophecies, hymns, epiphanies in poetry and prose, descriptions of moments when life brims with what is beyond us, even complaints about the silence or absence of divinity – all are ways we can write our way, and help others read their ways, toward divine presence. In this class, we will examine a few examples of these kinds of writing, and do exercises to help us practice, build on, and leap beyond them.
Joy Ladin has published eleven books of poetry, including her latest collection, Family; National Jewish Book Award winner The Book of Anna; and Lambda Literary Award finalists Transmigration and Impersonation. She has also published three books of creative non-fiction: Once Out of Nature: Selected Essays on the Transformation of Gender; National Jewish Book Award finalist Through the Door of Life; and Lambda Literary and Triangle Award finalist, The Soul of the Stranger. REGISTER HERE: https://www.iwwg.org/event-6484169
Writing What You’ve Never Had the Courage To
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28, 5:00 - 6:30 PM EST
“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.” —Muriel Rukeyser
In writing memoir about our lives, women are writing what we know, not what we are allowed to know or expected to know, or, above all, permitted to tell. We will inevitably be criticized.
We often fear being judged if we put our truth on the page. We fear being criticized for being too angry, too vulnerable, too revealing, too sad. We’re told to stay small, not to take up too much space and, above all, to be likable, nice, straight, able-bodied, and mentally sane.
This workshop is an opportunity to reveal your secrets to yourself and others. Write about what you never had the courage to write, what you never have wanted others to know about you. Put your secrets on the page and you can omit and edit later. Allow yourself to reveal your innermost thoughts, secrets, experiences, feelings because we have all had them. Carolyn Heilbrun writes: “Women are telling their stories to publicly tell other women what their lives have been like.” The purpose of art is to change the conversation.
We will look at excerpts from memoirists who have had the courage to put their truth on the page about such topics as sexual abuse, desire, shame, dealing with family secrets: Chanel Miller, Katherine Harrison, Mary Karr, Jeanette Walls, Honor Moore
During the workshop, you will have an opportunity to write your truth and share it in the chat if you wish.
Maureen Murdock, Ph.D. is the author of her new book Mythmaking: Self-Discovery and the Timeless Art of Memoir and the author of the best-selling book, The Heroine’s Journey translated into 23 languages. Murdock teaches a merry band of memoirists in Santa Barbara and is also author of Unreliable Truth: On Memoir and Memory; Fathers’ Daughters; Spinning Inward: Using Guided Imagery with Children; and The Heroine’s Journey Workbook. www.maureenmurdock.com.
REGISTER HERE: https://www.iwwg.org/event-6472945
Leo and I hope to see you online for some writing, learning, and sharing Art. Yes, that IS Annie Finch’s A Poet’s Craft behind him. Every poet needs this book.